For PM, a Televised Grilling on Corruption

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh takes questions from reporters live on state-run TV this morning, many of the queries are sure to be about what his government has done to address allegations of corruption that have surrounded his administration for months.

Reuters

Students at a rally to fight corruption in Jammu on Tuesday. PM Manmohan Singh faces more political headaches after the Supreme Court pressed for deeper probe into a telecom scandal.

Mr. Singh will likely point to some proposals a group of ministers headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee appear to be on the verge of recommending to the government.

The group, which met in New Delhi Monday, is working on curtailing some of the powers enjoyed by ministers both at the federal and state levels, according to an official at the department of personnel and training under India’s ministry of personnel, grievances and pensions.

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Another proposal would require that requests for permission to prosecute officials be acted upon within 90 days.

“Such proposals are definitely on the government’s agenda,” Ravinder Singh, a spokesman at the department, told India Real Time Tuesday.

Another official in the department of personnel and training, who did not wish to be named, said details of the discretionary powers given to those heading different ministries had been compiled and handed over to the group headed by Mr. Mukherjee.

The group was set up to propose ways to reduce corruption after a string of politically debilitating scandals that range from problems with the government’s telecom spectrum licensing process in 2008 to a housing scandal in Mumbai have tarnished the image of the Congress party-led government.

With the budget session set to begin Monday, the government is making every effort to persuade opposition parties it is taking their corruption concerns seriously. The previous session of Parliament stalled over an opposition demand to set up a committee of members from different political parties to investigate the telecom scandal, which the government was unwilling to agree to.

In recent days, Mr. Mukherjee has met with opposition parties to improve the political atmosphere in New Delhi ahead of next week. A news report on Tuesday said Mr. Mukherjee had also met L.K. Advani, elder statesman of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.

The anti-corruption steps being debated by the ministers were among those suggested by the Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi at the party’s anniversary session in December.

“We have ample evidence that all discretionary powers, particularly in land allocation breed corruption,” said Ms. Gandhi at the time. “I would like all Congress chief ministers and ministers to set an example by reviewing and relinquishing such powers.”

At present, 38 out of 54 ministries grant discretionary powers to their ministers, according to a report published in the Indian Express newspaper last week. Some of these powers include being able to allot land, change land use, and transfer bureaucrats and approve projects.

India already has many, many laws and rules on the books and they don’t appear to have done much to prevent or stem corruption. Will these ideas help?

Professor Bharat Karnad, who is at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, says the proposal to limit discretionary powers for ministers will prove fruitful only if the government instead assigns those powers to groups composed of people from different departments within a ministry rather than to a single department or person.

The smaller the power center that inherits those powers from the ministers, the easier for it to abuse its decision-making abilities in the same way that happens now.

“It needs to be a collective endeavor rather than an individual choice,” said Mr. Karnad. “Otherwise the whole exercise to check corruption will fall flat.”

Of course, collective decision-making is no guarantee either. The October Commonwealth Games that Delhi hosted have also been at the center of many corruption allegations, but many Games spending decisions were made in committee.

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